S.S. Independence

Built in 1950, the golden age of the luxury liner, the S.S. Independence was a 1,000 passenger...See more

Built in 1950, the golden age of the luxury liner, the S.S. Independence
was a 1,000 passenger ship specifically designed for high-speed, long
distance cruising on the open sea.

The Indy, and her identical twin sister ship, the S.S. Constitution,
worked the six-week route from New York to a variety of ports in the
Mediterranean. She was a first-class ship, transporting 2 presidents-
Truman and Reagan as well as numerous film and TV stars.

By the 1970s her steam engines were already hopelessly outdated and
incredibly expensive to operate, so she was refitted and demoted to low
speed tours of the Hawaiian Islands where she served until 2001.

She was decommissioned from her island hopping duties when American
tourism ground to a halt for 6 months in the wake of 9/11. She's been laid
up and left to rust at various locations in the Bay Area for the past 7
years, a ghost ship, shrouded in mystery.

She was towed from her berth in San Francisco 2/8/08 by an ocean-going
tug, the beginning of her last journey. The official word is she's being
towed to Singapore for refit, but most say it's the breaker beaches of
India for the last (barely) seaworthy '50s American liner.

Her sister ship, the Constitution, was on her way to be broken in India in
1997 when she began taking on water in a storm. The tug was forced to cut
her loose and she sank in 2 miles of water, 700 miles off the coast of
Hawaii. Those in the know say it wouldn't be shocking to see the similarly
worn out and structurally unsound Indy suffer the same fate.

I was lucky enough to wrangle night access for photography a few times in
the last week she was in San Francisco.